Wednesday, July 17, 2013

The Schwartz's vs the 5th of July with Friends

Our July 4th Celebrations continued on July 5th with our first (and hopefully annual) Rock the Block party that Gateway Baptist Church put on for the Town of Atoka. Can I just pause for a minute and say how much I REALLY love Gateway Baptist Church. They do a ton for our tiny town and it's just fabulous. If I wasn't absolutely sure and completely dedicated to the gospel and didn't love being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I would totally go to GBC. I think they have the right mind set for serving the community and I've yet to hear about their pastor preaching horrendous and false things about other religions. But I digress.

Anyway, the Rock the Block party was to celebrate the new awesome expansion at our local park. We've added a splash pad, sand volleyball court, and a new concession stand and restroom because the old one got burnt down (stupid teenagers). It's really wonderful. They also just announced a greenline they are going to put in connecting this park to another one so that will be a great place to run.

We packed up our wagon and drove to the Combs' house to hook up with the rest of the group and walk over to the park. I knew it was going to be crowded so I wasn't bothered when we got there and the pad was packed. Cody wanted nothing to do with it, but Sarah had a good time for a few minutes before she was fun-ed out.

Sarah in the splash pad hoops.

Then we headed back to our little set up to enjoy the FREE dinner. Hotdogs, chips, watermelon. Yum! We were worried about there not being enough food so we also packed a ton of stuff in our wagon. Needless to say, no one went hungry.

Jen and I hanging out and munching.

The weather was a little sketch. Major rain in the forecast but we luckily only got dumped out for about 10 minutes maybe less. Then it was nice and clear for the kids to enjoy all the other awesome and FREE activities like bounce houses and inflatable slides and the face paining.

Not sure if you can tell but Cody got his face painted too. After standing in line forever for Sarah to get her butterflies on her arm that she wanted I thought Cody needed something too. He wanted nothing to do with it. So I looked at the lady and said, "he's going to cry, I'm going to hold him still and I want you to paint a mustache on his face." She looked at me like I was crazy. "I said, I'm not kidding, here ya go, hurry!" And so she gave him a little mustache and sole patch. He hated it but eventually forgot. I however ended up hating it. It bugged me every time I looked at him. I guess I really don't like facial hair, even if it is fake.

Abby and Sarah dancing to the band.

Cody loved the big ball. That's what he played with most of the time.

I invited my sister to come out. She's a pretty awesome sport. She had been visiting a friend at Ft. Campbell in KY and drove straight from there to here for our block party. Henry loved the splash pad and Allison is a content little girl and was passed around the group without any complaint.

When it started getting dark we gathered back around our chairs for some sweet treats and to await the firework show.

I feel like I need to explain the crazy eyes here. I have a tendency to squint in EVERY picture. If I'm not squinting my eyes are closed and I'm pulling a total Earl. Annie took a picture for us and I looked and sure enough, I was squinting. Determined to do a better job keeping my eyes open I asked her to take another...and this is what we got. I think I'll go back to squinting.

Jessie and Sarah eating some cookies waiting for the fireworks.

I need to give you a little Town of Atoka firework history. When we first bought our land and our house was being built we lived in midtown and had tickets to the Redbirds 4th of July game. Good tickets. But some friends that already lived out here in Atoka asked us to come to the town firework show. They said it was great and we thought we should go ahead and start getting involved in the community so we gave up our ball game tickets and came to the show.

The "firework show" that year was set up in the baseball field behind the handy dandy firework tent. It was pretty much the owner of the firework tent and his sons running out there and lighting whatever it was with a punk and then running off. Then the next kid would run out there with a punk. It was like a drive way display and it was hilarious.

I didn't have high hopes for this year's "firework show".

I was mistaken. They've gotten a lot better. It still seemed like I could see someone running out with a punk but they must have had the leads daisy chained together because this was like one 20-25 minute long grand finale. It was BOOM BOOM BOOM one right after another after another. And it just kept going and going. There was no lull. It was not set to music. It was as if some red-neck said, "let's blow this junk up" and they set off to do it.